ArtPrize is just now underway and with it, that so-called rebooted conversation. In some ways, it never stopped.

Toward the end of last year's inaugural competition, I posted an entry on what I thought, from a lay perspective, were some of the most provocative questions -- philosophical and practical -- raised during the event. As the ArtPrize concept has metastasized, it seems the juiciest issue remains the tangled, vaguely adversarial relationship between the tastes of the event's popular audience and the values of the credentialed art world.

When this collision of worldviews occurs, the resulting friction is so predictable that it's a cliche unto itself -- you have the gawking masses on one side, the beret-wearing bohemians on the other, and never the twain shall meet, right?

While ArtPrize 2009 wasn't entirely a "West Side Story" showdown between these two factions (The Sharks! The Jets!), it at least offered them a large canvass on which to engage. The conflict was expressed most publicly in controversial remarks by artist Deb Rockman and probably most eloquently by Brett Colley in the Rapidian. The gist: First, can an event like ArtPrize ever be taken seriously by the art world? And, second, does the public deserve the power to judge the merits of art?

Considering its voting model (public), wondering what direction ArtPrize tilts this discussion on question two is kind of moot. And, as to the first question, an art writer for the Wall Street Journal had a hard time getting any "prominent insiders" to comment for his feature on ArtPrize creator Rick DeVos, whatever that tells you.

The debate over whether public voting, rather than a jury of professionals, should decide which piece of art deserves a $250,000 prize will go similarly unresolved this year. Setting aside the obvious point that the DeVoses can do whatever they want with their money, and that nobody is owed anything here, it's to ArtPrize's credit that the issue is being addressed at all.

But the extent to which these elements will advance the discussion is itself arguable. Writing in the Rapidian, Elizabeth VanArragon suggests, provocatively, that extending an olive branch toward the credentialed community -- letting it hand out prizes that are marginal compared to the size of the public award -- might do as much harm as good:

Will these awards be perceived as the "real" awards because they will carry more art world cache, given the jurors' reputations? Or will the smaller size of the juried prizes confirm that the "real" prize is still the largest one? I suspect that the answers to these questions will reaffirm some of last year's presumptions. While some artists and art professionals may be appeased that a consideration of current trends in the art world will be taken into account in the awarding of media-based prizes, my concern is that the art world and the public will be further distanced from one another.

Posed the public-versus-art-world question in an interview for ArtPrize's blog, last year's winner, Ran Ortner, said, "I've never known an artist who only wants to connect with an intellectual elite." Those intellectual elite, whatever the strengths of their case, would do well, at least perception-wise, to abandon the following argument expressed last year in Artworld Salon:

It is, I think, a measure of our confused relationship with art if we believe that the general public is better equipped to judge the work of artists than professional juries or peers. Would we pick heart surgeons this way? Architects? Firemen?

No, we wouldn't, but with heart surgeons, architects and firemen, there are objective criteria for determining whether a bad choice has been made: Your heart stops, a building collapses on top of you or you burn to death, respectively. It's more complicated with art. If I want to line my walls with Thomas Kinkade, nobody gets killed. Then again, public voting does determine which American gets access to the nuclear codes, so, um...sorry, I lost my train of thought.

For what it's worth, I'm more inclined to agree with artist and blogger Tyrus Clutter, who on Wednesday wrote that ArtPrize, though it won't match the art-world clout of a serious art fair like Miami's Art Basel, offers a rare opportunity for the schism to begin closing, or at least for figuring out whether that's even possible:

The shame is that these two worlds don't or can't meet. For all the critical theory that goes into creating and explaining the officially canonized works of contemporary art it would seem that the relevance to the average person on the street should be enormous. After all, the subject and content of these works really does touch on all our everyday lives, even if the economic factors do not...

Grand Rapids is making an attempt to begin a conversation between the public and the art world. It is like Middle East peace talks. You have to get the major players in the same room and everyone has to give a little to get the desired result. I commend Grand Rapids and DeVos for taking the first step.

Whether ArtPrize, in all its vast, crowdsourced glory, advances the conversation, or vulgarizes it along the lines of Bravo's "Work of Art" reality series, will depend, of course, on who is asked. But I look forward to hearing the debates, especially later during the next 19 nights, after wine.

And, for what it's worth, the crowdsourcing concept does go both ways. If you think a lot of the art is bad, there is, in addition to the down-voting option, a Tumblr site, ArtPrize Worst, that agrees with you.